Donnie Tyndall couldn’t do anything but play cheerleader. The confidence of his players was shot, and for good reason.
After jumping out to a 36-35 lead with 13:39 to go, Tennessee couldn’t get anything to fall.
But the pep talks didn’t help.
The Volunteers continued to struggle, going 13:02 without scoring a point and ultimately falling to Alabama 56-38 in Thompson-Boling Arena on Saturday for their first home loss of the season.
“We have such a young, inexperienced team, a lot of these situations we go through are the first time,” the first-year Tennessee head coach said. “So it is kind of the first time, at home, that we went without shooting the ball real well and went for that long a period of time of not scoring. You could see guys drop their heads a little bit in the last two or three media timeouts.
“All I did was encourage them and try to pump them up to try to stay aggressive, ‘We are going to make a few of these, this is our time.’ Unfortunately, it never happened.”
After a pair of Derek Reese free throws with 13:39 remaining, the Vols (9-5, 1-1 SEC) jumped out to a 36-35 lead and seemed to have momentum on their side.
Then, the offense went cold.
The Vols missed their next 15 shots while Alabama (12-3, 2-0) put together an 18-0 run, and failed to score again until junior guard Armani Moore made a layup with 37 seconds remaining.
Overall, UT shot 20.8 percent (5-of-24) in the second half, including 0-for-8 from beyond the 3-point line.
“At home, you can survive if you just get a bucket or two, because guys get their heads up,” Tyndall said. “It just kind of kept continuing to slide on us. We had some good looks around the goal that just didn’t go, and we had some really good kick out threes where guys were wide open, they just didn’t go in. All you can do is stay positive, our guys have been coachable all year, nothing changed tonight when it didn’t go our way. They were continuing to battle.
“We held that team to 41 percent from the floor, they only made six threes. If you would have said that before the game, I would have said we would be in good shape but we just really struggled offensively.”
The struggles, however, weren’t always evident.
After Tennessee shot 42.9 percent in the first half and went into halftime facing a five-point deficit, Josh Richardson did everything but miss to begin the second half.
The senior guard went on a personal 8-0 run over a 1:16 stretch early in the final period to give the Vols a 32-30 lead — their first since the 16:01 mark in the first half.
“I saw a couple drop and I just kept attacking,” said Richardson, who finished tied for the game-high with 17 points.
From there, though, Richardson went cold, missing his final five shots of the night.
The Vols are now faced with a quick turn around to host the Arkansas Razorbacks on Tuesday, with tipoff scheduled for 7 p.m. EST.
“You got to learn from the tape,” Tyndall said. “It’s college basketball. If you feel sorry for yourself or hang your head in this business people will bury you. They will put you out of business. With such an inexperienced, youthful team all I can do is continue to tell them, show them in the film room and we have to go to the practice floor to get better. It won’t be a taxing two days physically because we are so limited, but we have to learn in the film room.
“We have to tweak a few things. No knock on Alabama because I think they are a safe tournament team, but Arkansas is even more talented. So we better be ready.”
